Hi, all!
In an effort to minimize my moderating time on this site, tags on images will soon become mandatory. This will mean that if you don't enter them, you will get an error message and your image won't post. This will save me many hours (a few each day) of manually reminding people to tag, and will also ensure that everything that gets posted can be searched and found later.
My hope is that this requirement won't deter involvement and activity on the site; only that it will preserve my sanity.
Still, it will be important for members to assign meaningful and useful tags to ensure searchability. Generic words like "cookies" don't help distinguish content, because everything on the site is a cookie! 
If you haven't been consistently tagging, now is the time to get in the habit.
Here are some rules of thumb for selecting tag words:
1. Choose specific words or short phrases that describe the (1) subject matter in the photo; (2) the occasion displayed in the photo; AND (3) the techniques used, especially if the latter is not clear just by looking at the image. (Some people use the tags to help understand how the cookie was made.)
2. Another best practice is to include your name or your business name. This way, if someone searches on your name, all of your photos will come up.
3. Enter separate tags as separate words, NOT in one long string separated by commas. Do not put quotation marks around tags either. (The site cannot understand punctuation in the tags area.)
EXAMPLE: If I posted a Christmas set with Santas, snowflakes and bells in it that were stenciled and piped with a needlepoint pattern, tags might include:
Christmas, winter, Santa, snowflake, bell, stenciled with royal icing (to distinguish from airbrushed stencils), intricately handpiped, needlepoint, Julia M Usher, Recipes for a Sweet Life (all entered separately)
More tips on tagging and classifying photos into clip sets can be found here:
http://cookieconnection.juliau...READ-BEFORE-YOU-POST
I will definitely alert you on the date that this feature is implemented, but it will be in about 3 weeks. (UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 21 IS NOW THE ESTIMATED IMPLEMENTATION DATE.)
Thanks!
